Do you ever feel like your teacher is making you practice things painfully slow?
Maybe you are a dance student who just loves to move at a fast pace and find it difficult to slow down. Perhaps you are eager to try the more advanced or faster version and don’t like it when your dance instructor holds you back.
Possibly it annoys you. You wonder what’s wrong with you or what’s wrong with your teacher that you have to work through things so slowly. Maybe you even begin to think he or she is just being mean or controlling. Perhaps you want to scream,
“Why are we going so slowly?!?”
Speaking as a teacher, let me tell you your feelings are very normal. I’ve seen that frustration in the eyes of students plenty of times. It is unlikely that your teacher is making you go slowly to be mean or controlling. Cross my heart, it’s true!
Why does your teacher want you to take things slow?
To improve your skills as a dancer!
How does going slower and taking time to advance or move on help you improve?
It helps you move with clarity (clear, crisp, articulate)
If your teacher is asking you to slow down, he may see that something could be cleaner and wants to help you master the movement.
Think of it this way: if you fill out the answers on a quiz as fast as you can, you may get a lot of them right but there are details you may have missed or questions you misunderstood because you did not take your time. If you never slow down to soak up the details, you might take the test again and again and never get a 100 percent.
The same is true for your movement. Going fast, you might be missing important stuff. Working slowly means you have time to get the hang of the skill, or pattern, or pathway. This makes 100% possible at any speed!
It encourages you to have good body sense
Common sense is showing awareness and good judgment in everyday situations. Body sense is showing awareness and good judgment concerning the body.
Working slowly gives you time to pay more attention to what you are doing (see above) and also how you are doing it. You feel the muscles working more and, with your teacher as a guide, you can figure out or sense when something is not working or needs adjusting. You will learn to understand and “listen” to your own body. This listening skill will save you from injury and will help you to move in a more coordinated and organized way overall.
(Teacher’s note: Check these articles on the health benefits of moving slowly and the relationship between good body sense and athletic/academic performance)
It allows you to practice and develop control, which you’ll need as a dancer (even when moving fast)
Control in dance is having the power to direct or choose the way you move your body.
You are in the driver’s seat when you can move in a way that looks wild and out of control without losing track of where your body is in space. You are in control when, instead of needing to come down from your double pirouette, you choose to land it (see a famous dancer make that choice after an undecuple pirouette – that’s 11 of ‘em – in this video).
Fast or slow, having control over your body takes physical strength. But when you are moving quickly it is easier to “hide” any weakness, even from yourself. For example, falling out of a super fast spin can look and feel like a choice if you snatch that landing. And your balance as you promenade on one leg feels less wobbly if you move quickly around.
Going slowly keeps you from cheating yourself, allowing you to build your strength. It also helps you learn the difference between making a choice and making the best of whatever is going on. (It’s not that there’s something wrong with making the best of things, that is an important skill too, but it is always nice to have the power to choose.)
If you can do a movement with clarity, awareness, and control slowly, doing it fast will come more naturally!
That may answer your questions about moving slowly, but what about advancing slowly?
Why would a dance teacher “hold you back?”
So that you can move forward with confidence.
“Learning ballet is like learning geometry. You begin with the first theorem, master it, and then go on to the next. If you haven’t learned to solve the first problem, you won’t be able to tackle the one that follows.” ~ Fernando Alonso, Dance Magazine
Slowing down physically helps you to move with clarity and control. In a similar way, advancing slowly provides time to gather all the important details and to master skills so that you can take these with you to the next level. Moving up or on to the next thing before your body or mind is ready puts you at a disadvantage. Sometimes progress in dance feels slow enough and you may be frustrated that your teacher is “holding you back.” Try to think of going slow as a gift instead. Your teacher is giving you the tools and the time you need to move forward with more confidence in your abilities and ready to tackle the next problem.
Are there other things your teacher does or doesn’t do that are frustrating to you?
Is there something you do in class that you just don’t understand?
What are some other reasons a teacher might ask you to go slowly?
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Agreed that doing a movement, or series of moves in a slower than normal motion can help. Some things are harder to do if they require momentum to do, but many can be done in slow motion. There was a YouTube video (can’t for the life of me find it now) I once saw of a guy in a basketball sized arena doing a dance in super slow motion – it showed the finesse and ability to express his movements with much more depth and feeling than you would see in “normal speed”.
As a beginner in dance and Pilates – it seems it stops you from cheating and beig stochastic/ jerky and makes you use fine motor control – making the muscle move in a very fine grained way.
I think it makes a lot more sense if the student is told a reason r reasons why they are being taigh a mcrment at a slower speed – involving them – as it helps the student understand more all the details and body movement for each bit practised. Helps with really breaking down basic steps at it forces you to understand exactly the start position and the end position and what all the body needs to be doing to get from a to b – giving more waypoints between start and finish. Infruriating at times , as the body can be so used to rushing movement and brushing off details rather than having those details there at normal speed.
Thanks Tom for your observations. Sounds like a really interesting video!
It IS important for students to hear and understand the reasons for things and to have involvement and ownership of the learning process. Development of trust between the teacher and student is crucial though also because in that relationship there needs to be an understanding and respect that the teacher has a reason behind what he/she is doing, always. That is a different topic all together but this post is written to support the understanding between student and teacher, not so that the teacher doesn’t have to communicate it but so that it is reinforced for the student by another voice.
Oh boy I could write a book! Patience, patience and patience. When your teacher slows something down, breaks it apart, please please know you have an expert guiding you. Placement precedes strength. Always. Understanding prevents injury. And when you FEEL it’s right – well, then you can speed it up. Once your brain knows it, and your muscles can do it, you can speed it up. Maybe you’re ready before some others in the class…. but just wait, you will never regret it. You will still have it even if you have to wait a bit.
Sorry Dianne, I just saw your comment (it got caught in my filter for some reason) but thank you so much for adding your input!
Placement precedes strength.
That needed to be said again cause placement or alignment, boy, that’s when I see those eyes glaze over and “Boring!” start to creep across faces. You could have the strongest bar of steel but if it’s not placed correctly in the structure, it’s not doing anything to keep that building standing (or from falling down).
And it is so true, I know no one who regrets having to wait, even when they got there first. When all is said and done there is nothing that you are “missing” that is more valuable than working well during the time you have. I’ve watched professional ballet dancers walk into beginner classes and work as though it was their company class.
This concept of moving slowly and correctly is so important to students. Moving with proper technique helps dancers build proper muscle memory, avoid injury and become strong, fabulous dancers.
Yep, yep, and yep, Deb! Thanks for stopping by!
Awesome article! But it still hurts that I’m in the absolutely lowest level for my age group & everyone in it is younger than me. This one girl cant even point her feet and she’s doing Pre-Pointe! I asked to go on Pre-Pointe and the people told me no. I know they know best, but I’ve been told I have extremely strong ankles and can point really far, so what’s holding me back? Am I doing something wrong?
Without seeing you dance, Ingrid, it’s just impossible to say. And your teachers’ requirements may differ even from my own (I actually have an article on pointe-readiness by the way).
What I’d advise is to ask for a conference with your teacher(s). Rather than approach it as “Why aren’t you putting me on pointe?” I’d suggest letting them know that you would really love feedback on the areas you need work, physically or otherwise. Also, I want to encourage you not to take your class placement too personally. You say “hurt” but I can almost guarantee that your teachers are holding you back to help you, not hurt you. I know it’s tough but rather than focusing on how they are negatively affecting your feelings (which is not very motivating), this is a great opportunity to focus on yourself and analyze what you need to do to get to the next level in your dancing (not necessarily the next class level but it could be). When you can just put one foot in front of the other and meet the goals you set for yourself, I think you’ll actually begin to improve at a faster rate.